Art by me; You're more than welcome to download the full-res image here.
Running in the Out was not easy in the slightest.
Amidst the charcoal-tinged haze, and with a respirator that barely managed to filter the lifeless air, it was all Ramsey could do just to keep going—let alone keep up. Near-seismic shockwaves from the rough-poured and mottled concrete of the Out juddered up his legs, while his heart thudded in his chest like someone wildly banging down a door.
All the while the Mole’s hijacked Security Drone darted ever forward at near-breakneck speeds, blinking out of existence as it was eclipsed by rough, insurmountable sections of the Barrier, before reappearing again a mere moment later in the tranquil, artificial moonlight-wash of the In.
Not for the first time since he started following the drone, Ramsey had to mentally pinch himself to make sure that he wasn’t still dreaming—that he wasn’t still curled up against the Barrier, his respirator hanging limply around his neck as he slowly succumbed to the loss of oxygen in his system.
His lips would probably be turning purple right about now, dark and choking, his skin would be following suit, complementing the purple with a pale blue like inked porcelain, while his consciousness would take a slow, meandering sojourn into blackness, dreaming up a bizarre scenario with a hijacked In Surveillance Drone.
Someone might find him in the morning, maybe.
If the dust storm didn’t kick up soon and smother the Out in thick, impenetrable, unbreathable smog. Or, if the acid-content forecast didn’t change—if it did, there wouldn’t be much left of Ramsey to be found but a vague puddle of pock-marked and sizzling mush.
The thought of becoming an unidentifiable mass of organic matter was actually kind of comforting to Ramsey: at least Walter wouldn’t find him and blame himself for another loss to the family.
No, this isn’t a dream, it's actually happening. It has to be.
Walter—Dad—had too much else to think about. That’s why Ramsey never told him where he was going.
All the while that Ramsey had worked next to Walter in the factory, he hadn't said anything at all to him about what he was planning.
Shift upon shift, fabricating perfect prefab apartments for Ins, box after box, while all around everyone is praying—to anything that will listen—for their name to be called in the Lotto. They knew that it was only ever the clever ones that somehow won the “random” Lotto and got a one-way ticket into the Inner District. Win, and you get to leave the Out behind forever, leave your families and friends to get swallowed by the dust, centimetre by centimetre, until all that's left of the human race is a fossilized trash heap in the strata of history, buried deep beyond memory. While the Dome got to live on in its self-contained and regulated paradise.
They knew, and yet they prayed anyway; just like Ramsey knew, but kept silent anyway, forcing a smile.
For Walter.
Working together, eating together, living together, dying together, day by day, and Ramsey just kept quiet, watching his Dad waste away from the toxic world, and making shit up about what he was saving all those credits for—letting Walt assume that he was eyeing a fancy new Terminal or something. It was torture.
Walter was too stubborn to understand, anyway. Dying of overwork in the factory, dying of a lack of oxygen, dying of loneliness, dying of cancer. Dying, just like everyone out here, with crappy disintegrating hospitals and overworked, malfunctioning, falling-apart Doc-drones, but content with their life, content with separation. He was an Out proud of it. Screw the In, the Out didn't need their charity. The human race had survived far worse, and they would endure still.
Dad deserves better, Ramsey thought to himself in between the screaming of his muscles as he pressed on even faster, pushing himself to his limit. I'll fetch Mum, it’s the least she could do for abandoning us in this wasteland. She’ll get him into an In hospital. I’ll make her.
Somewhere in the umbral corners of his mind, hidden in a neglected fold of cobwebs and forgotten things, another voice tried to make itself heard above the din of firing neurons and the throbbing blood currently reverberating through Ramsey’s body, but it was drowned out by the cacaphony.
Ramsey’s lungs were straining to find some usable oxygen being filtered through his respirator, but there just wasn't enough to go around. He was getting light-headed; his vision was blurring into an indistinct fuzz.
Squinting past the kaleidoscopic bocce currently filling his vision from the exertion in the thin air, Ramsey could just barely see the brief flashes of his own reflection in the windows, blurred and vague, like a crazed animal trying to escape, a shadow barreling through the night. He almost missed it, but Ramsey skidded to a stop just in time as the drone stopped abruptly in the grimy window.
Immediately, Ramsey’s head started to spin like a gyroscope in turbulence, as a breathless rush of exhaustion pressed-in on him, a rapidly imploding pressure vacuum. Doubling over and clutching his knees for anchoring support, Rasmey desperately tried to catch his breath. He managed several gulps, sucking any air he could into his lungs greedily, like an alcoholic desperately scraping the barrel of an empty cask for that last, elusive drop. All he could hear was the sound of his ragged, rasping breaths as they were amplified by his respirator and rendered with a tinny cadence.
Slowly, the rumbling current of lightheadedness passed and his heady drum-soloing heartbeat slowed to a waltz, the cascading rush of blood in his inner-ear subsided to a gentle gurgle.
Looking up Ramsey could see the slowly resolving image of the drone waiting impatiently on the other side of the Barrier’s grimy window. It hovered and twitched curtly as it adjusted, trying to keep itself level in the airflow of the In, like a fidgeting mechanical bird. A bright blue message flashing repeatedly on its curved side-panelling like a neon sign during a power surge:
HERE.
As Ramsey looked on, the drone started inching closer to the edge of the window, reversed, and then darted forward again.
His breathing now normalized and the world resolving itself from bloated, distorted pixels into clarity, Ramsey glanced in the direction that the drone was emphatically gesturing towards. He was confronted with the same, rough concrete homogeneity that encompassed the entire circumference of the In.
Walking up to the wall, Ramsey inspected the patch closely but was unable to make out any difference in its pockmarked surface that would belie some kind of portal into the In.
Leaning around the wall and peering through the window, Ramsey shrugged questioningly at the hovering Security Drone. In response, the little drone almost did a backflip in frustration, as if attempting to convey the most exasperated of eye-rolls, and blinked back rapidly:
IDIOT.
Ramsey shot back a hurt and confused look at the drone’s tiny tantrum. Then, the display winked again:
DOWN.
Surprised, Ramsey inspected the ground but still couldn’t spot any discernible egress into the In.
With a grimy shoe, he wiped away the palimpsest of dust that choked the Out, revealing a minute crack in the ground. Shifting more disintegrated debris, the crack turned into a crease, Ramsey’s excavations revealed two perfectly square outlines, positioned side-by-side in the mottled paving of the In.
Looking back towards the drone, Ramsey gave it a thumbs up. The almost deadpan stare that he seemed to receive in turn, as the drone hovered in place, unmoving, while its front camera drilled right into him, was unsettling. The drone flashed back:
MORON.
Then, it started flying backwards while blinking:
MOVE.
Once again, Ramsey’s face turned into a featureless wall to rival the Barrier itself, as he stared back blankly, perplexed by the drone’s seeming irritation. His perplexed state rapidly turned to surprise as the ground beneath his feet began to vibrate.
Springing back, Ramsey could only stare as the squares began to rise up like megaliths with a crunching sound, before smoothly gliding apart with a pneumatic hiss. Ramsey stared into the darkness of the gaping opening in the ground that the newly risen columns flanked, and gulped dryly.
It's actually happening.
For the first time, Ramsey looked at his surroundings: he was standing in the street, the dilapidated apartments of the Out slowly crumbling behind him. There was no one around at all. Window seals were tightly fastened and tattered curtains were drawn protectively—not even the sound of a Terminal blearing the Lotto seemed to penetrate the eerie emptiness.
The forecast probably changed. Instinctively, Ramsey reached for his Terminal to read the report, but then remembered that he had tossed it a couple of hours ago. A smog-storm was probably revving itself up somewhere and about to choke out the Out, or an acid downpour was about to drench the Out in a sizzling, corrosive deluge. Probably both.
Looking around, it dawned on Ramsey that he knew this place: his friend Phil from the factory lived just a block from here in a tiny apartment with his three kids, his wife and the in-laws.
Ramsey suddenly remembered Phil talking about how there was a leak in the building and that a hole had burned straight through four floors during the last acid-pour. Ramsey really hoped the super had patched the hole...
Either way, Ramsey didn’t need to worry about that anymore. Tearing his mind away from the Out, he focused again on getting In.
The drone was still hovering in the window, still antsy and impatient, flashing ‘HURRY’, ‘IDIOT’ and ‘HUNGRY’ in a seemingly infinite loop. The nebulous void beneath the street was now lit up by a blinking bulb, illuminating a steep set of metal steps leading down beneath the street.
Pulling off his mask, Ramsey took one last filthy breath of the diseased atmosphere of the Out, the burning in his lungs warming his soul. And with one last look at his disintegrating surroundings, he took a determined step towards the opening, and then another.
As he disappeared below the surface he glanced up to see the Surveillance Drone practically doing backflips behind the dusty window. And then, with another sibilant exhalation, the pillars pressed back together and began to descend.
As the clank of his footsteps reverberated through the metal stairs, that little voice tried to assert itself again from behind a black curtain in the dark recesses of Ramsey’s mind. It was small and weak. A child’s voice, sniffling and trying to speak through a deluge of tears.
I’ll find out what I did to make her leave!
And just as soon as it asserted itself, the little boy hid away again, dissolving back into the darkness with a flutter of delicate butterfly wings, its small, trembling voice echoing through the gloom beneath the Barrier.
In | Out
